Re: An intuition pump

On Tuesday, September 23, 2003, at 08:48  AM, Jim Hendler wrote:
[snip]
>  I see URIs as a nearly infinitely large addressable memory - we have 
> a naming convention to avoid simply numbering the spaces -- i.e.
>  http://www.sally/RDFDocument#person is just a short form for
> "Web memory location 33290948209842398"
> we then have bits that live inside these memory locations.

While coherent, it seems completely at odds with prevailing TAG and 
sw-meaning curretns, to wit, that URIs are names with referents that 
could be anything. Or is this just an analogy?

I thought my case was trying to illustrate eminently practical 
question: MUST I import the freshest copy I can get of the URI owners 
ontology of every URI I use in a document. Weaken it further, SHOULD I? 
Weaken it further, IT'S IN SOME SENSE A DARN TOOTIN GOOD IDEA (I have 
no idea what RFC that one comes from :)) to do so.
[snip]

> I guess in my stupidly naive way, I don't see why this is drastically 
> different than if on my Web Page I claim (in words) Bijan is my 
> employee and on his Web Page he claims (in words) that he is my 
> underpaid slave.    We each are able to state our intended meanings, 
> someone pointing to my page can tell the difference from if they are 
> pointing to Bijan's page, and those referring to things on the pages 
> have to be careful they point at the right place.  I can steal content 
> from Bijan's page, I can cut and paste from Bijan's page, the one 
> thing I cannot do is "coopt" Bijan's page in any way that will fool 
> your software.
>
> (I admit that I could fire Bijan, keep the URI he has, and change what 
> it says - but that seems to me to be an extreme case and one way 
> beyond the call of our software to handle. (It seems to me some of 
> Bijan's intution pump is based on a scenario more like this one, which 
> is why I mention it))

Acutally, it isn't *based* on such a senario. That's just a further 
development. The core scenario is of a case where someone wants to use 
someone else's URI in there own document with their own definition.

> Anyway, my problem is that given my simple world view, I cannot find 
> any interesting examples where Tim's solution would make smart people 
> like Bijan and Peter so upset, yet it clearly does, which is why I ask 
> for examples that can help a simpleton like me understand what the 
> pragmatic effects are

Actually, I'm just trying to 1) interpret, 2) reject something I see 
implied by the following language from 
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003Jul/0022.html>:

"""- that use of a URI in RDF implies a commitment to its ontology, and 
if
there is doubt as to what ontology that is, the web may be used to
resolve it.
- that the web is not the final arbiter of meaning, because URI
ownership is primary, and the lookup system of HTTP is though important
secondary. (That is, if you hack a web server's ontology files, you do
not change hat the URI means, you just break a machine for a while)"""

To wit, that there's some strong claim on me (to try to import the 
freshest version of an ontology of the URIs I use).

Note that it's a bit *more* general than that "I must try to hit the 
server" issue. I want to know what *commitment to its ontology* MEANS. 
What must I do?

At the moment, I have no other axe to grind. At the moment, I don't 
CARE what *other* meaning there might be floating about these URIs. If 
I *have* to import that ontology, andI can't sensibly "override" it 
even when it's crystal clear what I'm doing, then we have a very very 
strong cost for using anyone elses URIs. I *suspect* that the 
restriction to properties is designed to try to reduce the cost a bit, 
but I don't see that working.

I'll put this last bit in a separate message so we can have a clean 
thread.

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.

Received on Tuesday, 23 September 2003 10:23:43 UTC